


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Goldmonger



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 18:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2859968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his Fall, Fíli holds on for a little longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Gold Can Stay

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic (pls be gentle) but I had to do something to honour Fíli, it's cathartic, what can I say :/
> 
> This is a self-indulgent fic that imagines what would have been Fíli’s final thoughts if he hadn’t died immediately after being thrown from that cliff. I am a hardcore Fíli supporter, so yes, his barely-there role in BOFA hurt me in irreparable ways. I will remain irrevocably disappointed in that film/trilogy and Peter Jackson forever. Sorry.
> 
> The title is the name of a Robert Frost poem.

He looks into the blank whiteness of the sky, his eyes streaming as flecks of snow are blown into his line of vision. He feels cold; but not in the shivering, goosebump-rising way that he associates with snowball fights and too many days riding in the rain. This cold goes to his bones, infiltrates his body in a way that feels like a betrayal – a snide voice telling him “give up now, you have no more defences. You’re already decomposing.”

  
He’s certain he must be trembling in some way, rippling the tepid ooze of his blood and creating a dent in the ice. He was being buried alive, he realised numbly. The blood would melt a grave, and the snow and frost would be the flowers and the freshly turned soil. How neat, he thought faintly. He wasn’t a nuisance in death, he was considerate. Not one of those legends to go out swinging a blade, taking a slew of orcs with them to the afterlife, no, he was a practical boy.

 

 _“My brilliant, practical little boy! Aren’t you just a gem to your old Amad?_ ”

 

_“You can’t come on this quest. Fíli, you’re practically still a boy -”_

 

_“Practically boys? We’ll show Uncle our worth, eh brother?”_

 

Fíli, direct descendant of the infamous Durin the Deathless, burying himself in snow while his comrades combat fearsome foes, scribes and balladeers already taking notes on how courageous they were, how they fought till there was not a drop of blood left in them.

  
Fíli, the prince lost before the battle. Yes. Heard he fell like a sack of potatoes.

  
His eyes started to burn then, until his vision blurred from stark nothingness to grey nothingness, and hot tears ran trails down his temples. He had never felt so foolish in all his life, which was quite an accomplishment for a dwarf who had been up to his ears in mischief since he knew how to walk, and talk, and drag a little brother around to join in his schemes.

  
More hot tears, and his chest heaved now. He wasn’t able to clench his stomach or shoulders, since everything below his neck may as well have been carved from ice itself, but sobs wracked him anyway. What a hell, he thought absently, to have a fire within your head while the rest of you isn’t able to burn, isn’t able to feel the flames. He thinks wildly that he’d happily burn alive rather than sink into this ice, to fade away like a snowflake on a child’s palm.

  
He wants to dig a hand into the gaping hole he knows is just below his ribcage, leaking his life force into the ground, and stem the flow. He wants to get up on his shattered legs, and straighten his broken back, and stride to where he knows his brother and uncle are grappling for their lives. He wants to be able to stand between Kíli and another Morgul arrow. He wants to brace himself before Azog’s Morningstar in lieu of Thorin. He wants his uncle to retrieve their family’s mountain, and he wants to know his brother will be there in a century to carry on the line. And then, after that pain – after the blissful agony of protecting his family and making himself a worthy heir to the King Under the Mountain – he wants to die.

  
He doesn’t want this. Mahal no, he doesn’t want to go so easily, like the runt of the litter drowned in a barrel. This wasn’t supposed to be his ending.

  
Those stories he used to tell Kíli, second-hand from Thorin and Dwalin and Balin, about Rangers and immortal dwarf kings and warriors who saved entire peoples – he wanted to be a tale told to a little brother one day. He wanted someone to say “he didn’t die for nothing.”

  
Fíli could see black spots swimming in the dirty grey of the sky, and felt himself choke at the thought of more giant bats descending upon them before he understood – this consciousness was short lived. He was about to fade.

  
_Kíli. You should be here._

  
The thought was irrepressible, but he shook it off as quickly as it came, even though his mind was beginning to slur now.

  
He’s fighting for his life, he told himself firmly. He’s fighting for Thorin’s life, fighting for the home we never knew. He’s avenging me. He can get through this. They both can.  
The distant sounds of battle now turned into a pleasant ringing, a bell-like sound that reminded him of metalwork - the sweet song of a hammer and malleable iron. The Maker’s Forge, he knew it now. It called to him, the Halls of Mandos and a peace he had never known.

  
“My last goodbye, brother,” he rasped though lips that could barely move. He wanted to see him again, he realised with a lump in his throat, and it was a need so fierce then that it hurt – he wanted to hear his absurdly funny laugh, listen to him play his fiddle in perfect harmony to his own and elbow him at the dinner table when Amad wasn’t looking. He wanted one moment where he could really say farewell.

  
But Kíli was fighting now, with their uncle. And Kíli would make it through, just as Thorin would. The thought was like a shock blanket, giving him an imaginary cushioning warmth as he felt himself push off from the harbour of the living, watching the shores shrink with surprising rapidity.

  
You’ll be all right, little brother… words formed and unfurled as he drifted, and they allowed him some semblance of relief, for whatever it was that was feeling for him now. He wasn’t there to protect him, but maybe that was the lesson in all of this. Kíli could survive without his brother. He didn’t need him to save him this time.

  
Fíli’s last breath came with a crooked smile on his pallid face, staring into the darkening sky until Bifur and Bofur found him, frosted over like a cake. They closed his eyes carefully, murmuring rites in Khuzdul, and brought him back to the mountain to lay him beside his brother and uncle, both of whom had near identical expressions of fixed despair.


End file.
